Evaluating and Testing Web APIs

Thanks to the massive adoption of cloud and mobile applications, web APIs are moving to center stage for many business and technology teams. As a direct result, the need to deliver a high-quality API experience is essential. When it comes to quality aspects of web APIs, there is more than first meets the eye. Apart from obvious characteristics related to functionality, performance, and security, several not-so-obvious traits of APIs are crucial for their adoption—many related to the context of the end user and how the API is to be consumed. To give you a thorough understanding of web API quality and to prepare you for testing these APIs, Ole Lensmar dives into both the expected and unexpected quality aspects of web APIs that you as a tester need to be aware of, including the importance of API usability, third-party API handling, and the passionate debate around web API metadata standards.

Ole Lensmar is chief architect at SmartBear Software, provider of software quality tools used by more than one-million developers and testers worldwide. Ole is the co-founder of eviware software which joined forces with SmartBear in 2011, and the creator of SoapUI, the most used API testing tool in the world. Living his passion for software development, Ole writes a weekly column for Network World about software quality; frequents the speaker circuit; and blogs in general about coding, quality, and all other fun things in life.